Plaque on Library Way on 41st Street between Park and Fifth Avenues, Manhattan

If you attend Sunday platform regularly, then you know that I often begin and end my talks with poetry. It is a form of prayer to me, sacred text for an ethical religion.

When I turn on my computer in the morning, a poem awaits me, courtesy of the Writer’s Almanac (http://writersalmanac.org). I scan it first, taking in the form and shape of it; then read it aloud to decide whether to add it to my collection, now nearly 800 pages. What qualifies as a “keeper”? A poem that I’ll want to read again and again, one that I can use in a Sunday platform or that may inspire a future platform address, a poem that I can use as a Humanist invocation at an interfaith or social justice event. The others I delete. . . Because while I love poetry, I don’t love every poem.

April is National Poetry Month (http://www.poets.org/national-poetry-month/home). I learned about this when my children were in elementary school. P.S. 321 was a haven for the arts, and in April everyone – students, faculty, administration, maintenance staff, and parents – carried a poem in her or his pocket. What’s more, you could stop anyone (“Even Principal Heaney, Mom!), and ask to hear the poem read aloud.

After many Sundays together, I have converted a few of you. Here’s an invitation: Stop by my office, room 502, and on the inside knob of the door, you will find a bag hanging, with a sign above it the reads: